Sometime in the middle of October each year, the Bomrr clan in Nagaland rush to the caves in Mimi village. With a good stock of burning firewood, men and women are ready for the bat harvest festival—an annual ritual where anywhere between 7,000 to 25,000 bats are suffocated or smashed to their deaths. These bats, the clan believes, have medicinal properties and can cure diseases like diarrhoea and body ache, and increase vigour. Now, a new study has shown that these bats, rather than being a cure to diseases, carry deadly filoviruses that could infect humans.

Humans have evolved a complex system of communication expressed through language and primates are perhaps not far behind. Basic signals like facial expressions, gestures and vocalisations, used to share information, are used by humans and other primates. In a new study, researchers from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, have investigated and compared gestural communication in wild bonnet macaques (Macaca radiata), to those in other apes. 

We have all heard of the Indus Valley Civilisation.It is well known for its granaries, drainage systems and systematically planned cities like Harappa and Mohenjodaro. However, not much is known about its rise and fall; although there are various theories. In a pair of new studies published in the journals Science and Cell, a consortium of international researchers, including those from India, have tried to decipher the origins of present-day Central and South Asian people. They have used recent advances in genetics to extract and analyse genetic material (DNA) from the remains of several ancient populations, including people from the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Study shows almost 40% South Asians and 60% Sub-saharan Africans cannot afford the EAT-Lancet diet.

Researchers estimate that half of these deaths, resulting in India and China, can be prevented.

An international team of scientists from China, the USA, the UK, Hungary, Austria, Germany and India, have carried out observations of the Sun using the Goode Solar Telescope (GST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in the USA. Their study is published in the journal Science.

We all know that the geometric object of minimal surface area amongst all shapes with a fixed volume is the round ball, whose boundary is spherical. Water blobs try to minimise surface area and curl into spherical droplets. The physical problem of surface-area minimisation is thus quite well understood. What about the opposite problem of surface-area maximisation? Does the problem even make sense? Indeed it does. Trees try to maximise surface area to get the most of sunlight through their leaves.

In 2018, around 1.5 million people died from tuberculosis (TB) — an infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs. A major obstacle in the clinical treatment of TB is the long therapy time required to clear the infection. An infected patient needs to take antibiotics for over 6 to 9 months to prevent a relapse — a duration so long that many discontinue their medications.

In a recent study, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur have explored the use of a new blend of chromium (III) as an eco-friendly electrolyte for depositing chromium-based coatings on metallic barrels. They reinforced chromium with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and a ceramic compound called yttria stabilised zirconia (YSZ), to improve the properties of the coat.

Imagine just switching on your lights and downloading a movie in a second. The world demands high-speed internet connectivity at a lower price. This increasing clamour for speed and bandwidth is opening up new avenues, and one such evolving domain is LiFi - a wireless technology that makes use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data. Light waves are 10,000 times denser than WiFi signals, so there is vast untapped potential here.